Posted
by
timothyon Wednesday March 24, 2010 @08:09AM
from the new-use-old-number dept.

angry tapir writes "The Commodore 64 is getting a makeover, with a new design and some of the latest computing technologies, as the brand gets primed for a comeback. The revamped computer will be available through the Commodore USA online store, which is set to open June 1. The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel's 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities."

Look. at. the. site.
It's a chinese 3rd rate gadget imitator wet dream. There is a pseudo-configuration page vaguely mimicking Dell's one with no functionality. No logo. No design. and GOD that heinous thing in the pictures looks CLUNKY and CHEAP.
This is a hoax./. have seen several in the past years tied to the good old C64. I'm very surprised it made the front page:(

Slashdotted, nice!
Anyway, the site i meant was the homepage of this supposed "manufacturer" that licensed Commodore's brand.
Here is the link.
http://www.commodoreusa.net/index.html [commodoreusa.net]
It's ludicrous:P

I am suspicious as well, the built-in keyboard has windows keys. If it is being marketed as a machine to run multiple OS's, why not put the old C= symbol on those keys. Since they are using the name, why not use the logo as well? It's a minor point, but if this is real and they are resurrecting the name to appeal to those of us who remember messing around with Commodores then details like that might matter a bit. Certainly anyone who remembers playing around with basic on the livingroom tv could figure

You'd probably have little doubt that the site is genuine, if you simply examined it further. It really is rather pathetic -- they're looking for people to only purchase this slapped together crap for nostalgia's sake.

No news story here folks, just another company trying to peddle something no one will buy.

Look. at. the. site.
It's a chinese 3rd rate gadget imitator wet dream. There is a pseudo-configuration page vaguely mimicking Dell's one with no functionality. No logo. No design. and GOD that heinous thing in the pictures looks CLUNKY and CHEAP.
This is a hoax./. have seen several in the past years tied to the good old C64. I'm very surprised it made the front page:(

I think it is legit enough. Commodore USA is a registered company in the United States, and their site is quite clearly commodoreusa.net

The actual issue is not so much that it looks like a hoax, but that it is so endlessly poorly carried out. It's pathetic! It's like watching Birdemic [wikipedia.org] , a product that tries to itself seriously, while everyone around it is laughing (and possibly crying a little inside).

The actual issue is not so much that it looks like a hoax, but that it is so endlessly poorly carried out.

I would tend to agree. But the original C64 was poorly carried out, too, so this as a nostalgia product has some merit.

Now, before people roll out of the shag carpeting to rage at me, the C64 was an inexpensive and well marketed, but technically second rate product. I mean, they put a whole second 6502-type processor in the disk drive and set the machine up to read/write from the disk over a pokey-do

I suspect that you had no first-hand experience with the 64, or that you experience was well after its heyday. When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well. Remember, we are talking about a machine that occupied store shelves unchanged (save for cosmetic and cost reductions) for over a decade. By the time home users of any machine were considering hard drives, the C64's day was long-since over. At launch, its graphics were among the top available and its sound capabilities blew absolutely everything in the consumer market out of the water. Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.

> When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well.

1. And all those expansion slots on the C64 are where again? Where was your 80x25 text again?

2. It may be hard for you to take off the rose-colored history glasses. Let's take a look at the facts: The Apple I and Apple ][ open slot architecture and daughterboards spawned serial cards, parallel cards, modems, CPU daughter boards (could YOUR C64 host a Z80?), sound cards, voice (Echo I) cards, mouse, floppy d

I'm not surprised it was shot with an expensive camera, the *REAL* manufacturer had those done by a professional, I'm sure.

Any of the rest of the crap in the summary or on their site can be assumed to be absolute BS. But hey, for those interested I have a 16 core 4THz machine with 32TB RAM that's the size of a matchhead. It runs off of a patented method for gathering and storing static electricity from the air, and interfaces to all external devices (display, HID, etc) wirelessly. I'll start selling them for $1,950,000. If I sell one I can move to a nice island. If I sell 1000 I'll buy the island. Err, I mean, ummm, we'll reinvest in the company to make our products even better.:)

Bonus points to the first person that can rip an mp3/flac from an old cassette and get the program to load.

Has anyone ever done that? Come to think of it, since MP3 discards audio outside of human hearing ranges, would it even work? I suppose that since (usually by limiting to 9600bps or so) you can get a fax machine to work on a VoIP line, this could work as well though.

Has anyone ever done that? Come to think of it, since MP3 discards audio outside of human hearing ranges, would it even work? I suppose that since (usually by limiting to 9600bps or so) you can get a fax machine to work on a VoIP line, this could work as well though.

Not sure about the commodore, but the BBC frequently used a rate of about 2400bps - and since when was audio tape a suitable medium to store audio outside of human hearing ranges?

Have you forgotten that cassette tapes only recorded *within* human hearing ranges?

I didn't forget that, I just didn't know it. As an analog device, I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why such devices wouldn't record outside of human hearing ranges, but I honestly don't know the specifics of how analog tape works, other than "Sound > Mic > Electricity > Tape Head > Magnetism > Magnetized Tape."

As an analog device, I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why such devices wouldn't record outside of human hearing ranges

It's rather simple, really; even analogue devices have a maximum 'resolution'. For film, this is the graininess. For tape, there's a certain magnetic response time.

Imagine, if you will, a nice 440Hz waveform; this is stored as a nicely wavy pattern in the magnetic particles. Well, if you were to store a 0.01Hz signal, there just wouldn't be enough offset, inch-by-inch, to detect it (that is to say, generate a magnetic current) when playing back (at normal speeds, anyway). In the opposite case, the wave patt

I managed to transfer some Acorn Electron tapes onto audio CDs once, and was also able to speed up the loading time by reducing the long "padding" beeps between the blocks (which I'm sure have a proper name..)

Oddly enough there was one tape that it just would not work with - though it loaded fine directly from the tape, so goodness knows what strange analogue copy protection had been implemented.

Whew! Thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding for us. I mean, I don't think I was alone in thinking that a computer with an Intel 64-bit quad-core cpu was a Commodore 64. Internet needs more people like you to stop people from trying to cash in on famous names from spreading their disinformation!

TFA says it's an Intel x86 based machine running Windows. The only thing Commodore about this thing is that it's built in to an oversized PC-style keyboard, and even that's a stretch. This is a Commodore in name only.

Because most of the millions of people who bought a C64 don't know or care about what happened with the Amiga. Adolf, on the other handm doesn't have any nostalgic associations for most people, and his ignoble legacy is a little better known, so your comparison is a bit of a stretch.

Sure, the C64 was a fantastic machine in its time. But that was the 1980s. Commodore hasn't been in the public consciousness for nearly two decades (the last Amigas from Commodore - the 1200 and 4000T - ceased production in 1996, if Wikipedia can be trusted). They're planning an all-in-one keyboard computer, just like the original C64, and I can pretty much guarantee: it'll flop. The design had good reason back in the 80s, but not so much now - they're banking upon the name driving sales, but I suspect a lo

Most of the younger generation (such as my self) has either never heard of C64 or never used one. I've never used one of these machines before; I might be interested in getting a modern remake if it was just as limited as the original, just to see how far we've come since that time period, but the brand means very little to me in a modern computer. The all-in-one design would be very hard for me to use on a day to day basis because of my desk arrangement, and the same applies to many of my friends' desks as

Your post makes me sad on two levels; first that at 25 I'm no longer part of the younger generation (nearly everyone my age has seen/used a C64 at least in their early grades of primary school); and secondly because there are poor people out there who have never had a chance to use one.

Most of the younger generation (such as my self) has either never heard of C64 or never used one. I've never used one of these machines before; I might be interested in getting a modern remake if it was just as limited as the original, just to see how far we've come since that time period, but the brand means very little to me in a modern computer. The all-in-one design would be very hard for me to use on a day to day basis because of my desk arrangement, and the same applies to many of my friends' desks as well. I concur that this will flop.

Presumably, if you were to get such a device, you would move your existing computer elsewhere . ..

For that matter, I see people of all ages using "all-in-one" computers every day. They call them laptops, notebooks, netbooks, etc. And these are even "all-in-oner" than a keyboard/computer with separate monitor like this "Commodore" sounds like -- haven't seen it, site is Slashdotted.

I see no reason for this particular outfit to succeed(keyboard computers are a niche, the C64 name isn't worth paying any extra for, Asus's oddball EEEboard will be out real soon now, etc.); but, the product itself has been around for some years now, which suggests that it is still making money, albeit in a niche.

Unless the latest outfit wearing a mask made from Commodore's flayed face is simply stealing clip art, what they are selling is a simple rebadge of Cybernet's "ZPC" [cybernetman.com]. Those things have been around at least since the P4 was the face of "intel inside" possibly earlier. Unless Cybernet is an ass about small quantities or something, there is absolutely no reason to order from some fly-by-night rebadge house; but the product is real enough, and presumably has enough of a niche(probably space constrained POS applications and similar) to justify the engineering costs of shoving a laptop motherboard into a keyboard housing for the past few generations of x86 hardware.

They could have put an emulator on and do all this.I kind of wish someone would create a mythical NextGen C64. Kind of what Commodore might have made if they had made a better C128.Imagine a 65816 CPU and an HD64180 to replace the z80 .

>Yes, in a suitable emulator.Then just get a free emulator such as VICE or Frodo, that more than capable of running on even a 486DX2.

Using PEEK or POKE from a BASIC prompt is at least an order of magnitude easier and more straightforward that messing with around with a kernel debugger of a such a massive operating system such as GNU/Linux. To replicate the Commodore experience you'd need a very stripped down and moderately powerful machine that boots direct

There’s nothing like it. At just 17.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer.

So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit. All the upgrade inconvenience of a laptop with none of the advantages.

There's nothing like it. At just 17.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it's designed to take up far less room -- and use far less energy -- than any other desktop computer.

So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit. All the upgrade inconvenience of a laptop with none of the advantages.

Seems more like an updated Amiga 600HD to me. A600 was 14x9.5"x3" and weighed about 6 lbs (with a big goofy external power supply whereon lies the switch... ugh.) 'Course, that had a 68000...

I am Junis, a refugee from the last regime of the United States. Our former oppressors ridiculed Commodore machines and as such I had hid my 2010 Commodore 64 behind my meager 65" LCD Television. Had it been found, I might have been criticized for buying such a brand of computer by my peers.

I could still see the dust of the pick-up trucks carrying Dell computers out of my village and some friends and I went and dug through the PS3, XBox 360 and Wii cables by the LCD TV where I had hid the computer. T

Since it will be some time before I get to see the good old C64 mentioned on the Slashdot first page, I'd like to say that Jack Tramiel is the unsung hero of the personal computer, even more than Steve Jobs in this regard. He advocated a computer 'for the classes, not for the masses'. By driving down the retail price and selling the C64 in toy stores and Walmart, he created a broader market and introduced a lot of low-to-middle class kids, who could not afford the Apple II or the Macintosh, to the joys of computing.

By sparking the low-cost microcomputer revolution of the eighties, he prepared a whole generation to the modern digital age.

I'd like to say that Jack Tramiel is the unsung hero of the personal computer [snip] By sparking the low-cost microcomputer revolution of the eighties, he prepared a whole generation to the modern digital age.

10 PRINT "THANK YOU JACK TRAMIEL"
20 GOTO 10

If it wasn't for the C64 I'd probably have never gotten into this stuff. God only knows what I would've wasted the years as a teenager on.

Tramiel was an ass, though. Sure, his contribution to the end effect was good, but talk about mistreatment of engineers. If you want unsung heroes, let's mention Bob Yannes and Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble.

Jack Tramiel may be an unsung hero of the personal computer, but he also had the dubious distinction of playing key roles in the destruction of two of the most important computer companies of the era, Commodore and later, Atari.

Tramiel - and more importantly, his engineers - is often left out in the modern retelling of the personal computer story, which is often presented as if everything that wasn't Intel, Microsoft, and Apple was some sort of bizarre tangental experiment that really didn't matter. Sadly, his management style was typical of the small-minded businessman, who treated his company as a fief and a playground for his personal grudges.

I often wonder how the Amiga would have fared long-term if a more competently-managed company than Commodore had bought it.

Tramiel had nothing to do with the Amiga or Commodore's reknown bad management, that came *after* he left the company; try asking David Pleasance about that. Atari was already in bad shape when Tramiel and his son took over.

Tramiel did try to buy out project Lorraine from Hi-Toro, but Commodore managed to land the deal (and 'f*ck up' the machine, as a famous Workbench easter egg recited).

By the way, long live Jay Miner [wikipedia.org], Commodore's Steve Wozniak.

Yes, I know, it's a Commodore in name only. However, it's about time that someone gave this venerable form factor another shot in the market. Why should I throw away a perfectly good monitor every couple of years just because the Macintosh inside it is obsolete? I've been saying for years that they should build the guts of the computer into the keyboard, not the monitor.

I'm ready to see this form factor start to get deployed again. Now that the typical desktop computer doesn't have quite as many cables coming out of it as it did a few years ago, it's time.

If it doesn't run EasyScript, I'm not interested. That was so cool: you could embed printer control codes into your documents, to turn on bold and underline and italics! Even superscript and subscript (if your printer could do that... mine did!)

To be fair, an "all-in-one" that puts the CPU in the keyboard can be handier than the iMac approach: it's a lot easier to carry from place to place and hook up to whatever monitor is handy.

Apple vs. Psystar ended with a $30,000 fine for copying MacOS X per se without permission ($30,000 for an unlimited number of copies, RIAA take note), plus $2500 for each individual case of DMCA violation (that is $2500 per each single copy put on a non-Apple branded computer that actually works; that's the expensive part). And if the machine is just _capable_ of running unmodified MacOS X, that is already a DMCA violation, whether the company or an end user installs the OS or not.

At least if it had come with a HDMI port to be by default attached to a HDTV, then it would be closer to the Commodre 64 legacy.

Almost any PC since 1987 can be connected to a TV because most HDTVs sold where I live have a VGA input. But the original C64 also competed with the NES as a game console; how will the new C64 compete with the Xbox 360?